Espada III - whilst I don't doubt the guy made the comment, I lived in Israel for 10 years and I know it's not strictly true (re Israeli's and contrails).
Going back to the thread - I used TK frequently to travel to/from Central Asia (mostly ASB and TAS). TK is the only Alliance airline with a decent frequency to these airports. The flights were OK, just departed at poor times of the day; however once I landed into IST I would switch to a European carrier for my flights back home; 3 hrs with TK were enough.
I also see a lot of upwardly mobile Turks these days in Europe, even AGP has a daily frequency to IST; but my preference going east is an established European carrier - AY, BA, LH or LX.